Pizza

The week after the lamented shuttering of Ratsie’s, 12 pizza joints remain in College Park.

There’s Blaze Pizza, the newest member as of October, which peddles its signature brand of customizable fast-fired — prepared in about three minutes(!) — personal pies.

Down Route 1 sits Slices Pizza Co., offering by-the-slice gourmet options for the university community’s semi-refined palates, particularly between midnight and 3:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Across the street, there’s Terrapin Pizza Mart, by all accounts a reliable — if not particularly innovative — purveyor of the college staple.

Just around the corner, Pizza Kingdom slings mid-tier jumbo slices at five bucks a piece.

There’s Pizza Autentica and Ledo Restaurant. There’s Papa John’s and Domino’s.

If you want to get technical, even 7-Eleven sells pizza.

And yet every year, it seems as though another new pizza parlor sees fit to forcibly insert itself into the mix.

For many upstart city restaurants, the narrative goes as follows:

1. An existing restaurant vacates its venue.

2. A new restaurant acknowledges the challenges of surviving in a saturated college-town market.

3. The new restaurant disregards the challenges of surviving in a saturated college-town market and moves in.

4. The new restaurant vacates its venue (see: Garbanzo Mediterranean Grill, ChiDogO’s, Lime Fresh Mexican Grill).

Somehow, though, that narrative usually hasn’t held true for College Park’s glut of pizza joints.

Blaze’s emergence onto the lunch and dinner scene hasn’t appeared to slow Slices’ late-night crowds. Pizza Mart, Ratsie’s and Pizza Kingdom had amiably coexisted all on the same block prior to Ratsie’s’ closing, which owner Mike Falamoun said, wasn’t a direct result of increased competition on Route 1.

Naturally, it came as little surprise when word broke that the retail space under The Hotel at the University of Maryland would continue the city’s not-so-proud expansion as a pizza hub.

So, come January 2017, Potomac Pizza will open its fifth location in this state under The Hotel, situated on Route 1 next to Paint Branch Parkway.

With dine-in, carryout and delivery options, it’s nothing the city hasn’t seen before, though its bar provides a slight twist. (Understandably, hotel patrons might not want to stop by Cornerstone Grill and Loft, R.J. Bentley’s or Terrapin’s Turf for a nightcap.)

With its enviable venue and family-style offerings, Potomac Pizza probably won’t go under. That said, the addition of yet another pizza parlor does nothing to rectify the city’s widely prevailing image as a failed exercise in college town-building.

Insomnia Cookies, slated to open between Pizza Kingdom and Marathon Deli, and Nando’s Peri-Peri, which will replace Ratsie’s, both offer cuisine students and permanent residents haven’t seen in the city. As niche dining options, their survival would improve College Park’s food diversity and could signal to other chains that the city is a viable market for growth.

So give us cookies. Give us Portuguese chicken. Heck, throw in a fourth Subway if you must.

But please, enough with the pizza.